‘They need your respect and your protection’: Garbage accumulation in Aurora's waterways impacts wildlife

Litter still an issue during annual community cleanup

Yorkregion.com
June 22, 2023
Laura Broadley

It might be difficult to picture the magnitude of the estimated 10 million kilograms of plastic debris that ends up in Ontario’s lakes and rivers each year, but when the garbage piles up in Aurora ponds, it is more difficult to ignore.

When Lawrence Moule arrived at the Aurora Community Arboretum in late April for the town’s annual community cleanup, he wasn’t surprised to see a vast collection of garbage in the ponds.

As the snow melts in the spring, the water returns to the waterways, bringing garbage along with it. Based on his observations, Moule said the litter in the arboretum doesn’t accumulate on a regular basis to the levels seen during the April clean up.

The safety and sustainability of the arboretum and the wildlife that call it home are why Moule continues to volunteer at the arboretum.

“It’s a wonderful green space. It’s one of the things that distinguishes our community among so many in the Greater Toronto Area that people could choose to live. I think Aurora is a very attractive choice among the GTA communities and one big reason for that is the arboretum,” he said.

The wildlife living in the arboretum depend on the resources it provides to stay alive, to reproduce and to thrive, he said, adding that destroying greenspaces with pollution is an “avoidable tragedy.”

Moule’s message to Aurora’s residents and visitors is to “please remember there are many other creatures around you as you walk through nature and they need your respect and your protection.”

Effective December 2022, the Canadian government prohibited the manufacturing and import for sale of some single-use plastics, such as checkout bags, cutlery, food service ware made from or containing plastics that are hard to recycle, stir sticks and most straws.

The federal government is working on regulations that will require some plastic packaging to be at least 50 per cent recycled content as well as rules for labelling recyclable and compostable plastics.

The Great Lakes Plastic Cleanup is a project made up of different stakeholders that uses technology to remove plastics at marinas from the Great Lakes. The garbage is then sorted and some plastics are directed back into the recycling system.

In the first year of the project, from 2020 to 2021, almost 75,000 pieces of debris were collected.

There is concern specifically with microplastics being ingested by wildlife, and most animals aren't able to digest plastic so it can stay in their system and accumulate, said Kyle Mennie, director of operations at Windfall Ecology Centre.

Bioaccumulation can happen when insects or phytoplankton consume microplastics, which are then consumed by fish.

“As it goes up the food chain, it gets more concentrated in the bodies of those animals and then ends up leading to larger health impacts. That can also be a risk for us if we’re fishing. We would also be ingesting a lot of those plastics we originally throw into the environment,” Mennie said.

“On a bigger scale, what happens typically when it rains it basically is taking any of that pollution, any of the dirt, any of the oils that are on products that are thrown on the ground, and those are carried along the waterways and then go into tributaries and eventually end up into the water system,” Mennie said.